Anna Negoescu, Mind-Body Medicine

Anna Negoescu

Mind-Body Medicine Student 2013

My name is Anna, and I am Program Director of a mental health residence in northeast Pennsylvania. Our program is a recovery oriented program that serves individuals with serious mental illness. I started a Mind Body Skills group in a local psychiatric rehabilitation program last fall. I also teach mind-body skills to staff and consumers of our programs.

I have always had an intuitive sense that disease was more than physical, and saw that people's thinking (including my own) had an effect on how they felt. As a new RN working in acute care after graduation, I felt hampered by the lack of attention paid to the whole person. I was trained to look at the patient holistically, but there was a disconnect in the actual practice of medicine in large systems. I had to find a social worker, or a psychologist to work with my patients, but those disciplines were not always viewing the patient's situation in the same way. The closest I came to a truly holistic model that made sense to me was in the hospice specialty.

I began to find conferences such as CMBM's Cancer Care Conferences, in 2000, and 2001, which began to nurture the holistic sense that I had. I continued those studies, and went to the CMBM Professional Training program in 2007 and then again to the Advanced program in 2010. I learned in 2010 that Saybrook had started a Masters program in Mind Body Medicine and from there made my decision. It was a process of investigating Masters programs in Nursing vs Saybrook. I finally chose Saybrook.

I was interested in the Saybrook PhD because of the specialty offerings. I wasn't sure I wanted to learn the "practice" but more of the research and possibly health systems specialty. But the curriculum is more than learning the science. It is experiencing the
science. I learned that the science has more validity for me if I can practice the skills and learn for myself. I did not choose the nursing programs because I still do not feel that nursing is a pure fit for me.

I am finally confirming for myself that earlier sense that the mind affects the body and that the body affects the mind. The interconnections of health, healing, emotion, thought, environment, spirit, are real and impact a person on all of those and other levels. It is affecting me. As I practice the skills, I learn more about myself. My journey takes me deep inside; I take research-based study with me on the journey, affirming, educating, describing, what I find, and then passing it on to others for their own journeys.